Audion

Matthew Dear, the Texan musician who built his reputation through minimal techno releases issued under the names Jabberjaw and False along with his own name, created Audion as an alternate outlet. This project marked a clear shift in direction, steering Dear toward tougher, more aggressive techno sounds that contrasted with the vocal-centered electro-pop he had previously explored under his given name. His debut Audion effort, the Kisses EP, surfaced in 2004 and quickly drew attention from leading figures in the techno community thanks to its intense arrangements, provocative track names, and mesmerizing artwork. Several months afterward, Spectral Sound—the club-oriented imprint of Ghostly International—issued two further EPs, The Pong and Just Fucking. In October 2005, Dear gathered material from those releases together with additional new tracks for the full-length album Suckfish. During 2006 he assembled a mix for the Fabric series, and that summer he joined Ellen Allien for a split single. Dear kept delivering Audion singles at a steady pace, most often through Spectral Sound, and later assembled many of them for the 2013 digital collection Audion X. He partnered with Tiga on the singles "Let's Go Dancing" and "Fever," both issued via the Montreal producer’s Turbo label, and released the standalone track "Dem Howl" on Kompakt. In 2016 Dear put out Mouth to Mouth 10, a tenth-anniversary remix set centered on his "Mouth to Mouth" single. The following year brought Alpha, his first Audion album in eleven years, which appeared on !K7. April 2017 saw the arrival of another Tiga collaboration, the Nightclub EP.